Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

John164918a,

I'm not sure exactly what's going on--the errors seem pretty generic--but perhaps the easiest solution would be to write a boot script that would automatically reinstall the Windows driver into ndiswrapper each time you boot your computer, since you say that doing that manually is the trick to getting the connection working.

To test that that solution would actually work, please try running these commands (before doing anything else) after the next reboot where the wired connection is not working:

(note that you have to give the correct path to the location of the b44win.inf file). After that, hopefully the wired connection will work.

If that doesn't work, please post the output of:

Code:

lshw -C Network
ndiswrapper -l

By the way, are you sure that you really need ndiswrapper in order to drive your ethernet card? I know it's possible to use ndiswrapper for ethernet, but I've never heard of anyone actually doing so, as virtually every ethernet card in the world should be supported by a native driver (b44 in your case, I think)--although perhaps your problem results from blacklisting issues with b44, which you probably needed to add to the blacklist in order to allow ndiswrapper (and not b43/ssb) to control your wireless card, which also has a Broadcom chip.

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

I tried following this guide but I still cannot get onto my wireless.
I had gotten on just fine before but when I updated I no longer could and I have no idea why. It's incredibly annoying and very stupid.

I typed ndiswrapper -l
and gotbcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternative driver: bcm43xx)
in return.
I think, according to the guide, that means that I have an alternative driver rather than the ndiswrapper trying to control the card, or something. I tried to blacklist it but when I tried to and then saved I got this message
"could not save the file /etc/modprobe.c.blacklist.
you do not have the permissions necessary to save the file.
please check that you typed the location correctly and try again."

I also noticed that "bcm43xx" was already blacklisted.

Why can I not save that and why is "bcm43xx" trying to drive the card if it's already blacklisted?

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

I tried following this guide but I still cannot get onto my wireless.
I had gotten on just fine before but when I updated I no longer could and I have no idea why. It's incredibly annoying and very stupid.

I typed
ndiswrapper -l
and got
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternative driver: bcm43xx)
in return.
I think, according to the guide, that means that I have an alternative driver rather than the ndiswrapper trying to control the card, or something. I tried to blacklist it but when I tried to and then saved I got this message
"could not save the file /etc/modprobe.c.blacklist.
you do not have the permissions necessary to save the file.
please check that you typed the location correctly and try again."

I also noticed that "bcm43xx" was already blacklisted.

Why can I not save that and why is "bcm43xx" trying to drive the card if it's already blacklisted?

Actually the module that's probably conflicting with ndiswrapper is called b43, not bcm43xx (bcm43xx is an older module; now it's blacklisted by default in Hardy). So open up the blacklist for editing (you couldn't save it before because you didn't use 'sudo' to open it):

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and add these lines to that file:

Code:

blacklist b43
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist b43 ssb

Then save the file, and reboot. Does your wireless work? If not, check lshw -C Network again. Which module is driving the wireless? And does this command return anything:

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

I tried what pytheas22 suggested and I still do not have wireless.

I typed in lshw -C Network and only got information for my ethernet interface and network controller. Before when I'd type that in there's be a third catagory for my wireless network. That's no longer there.

When I type in lshw -C Network | grep b44
I getWARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 latency=64 module=ssb multicast=yes

I still do not understand what my problem is and why it randomly stopped working after I updated.

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

I tried what pytheas22 suggested and I still do not have wireless.

I typed in lshw -C Network and only got information for my ethernet interface and network controller. Before when I'd type that in there's be a third catagory for my wireless network. That's no longer there.

When I type in
lshw -C Network | grep b44
I get
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 latency=64 module=ssb multicast=yes

I still do not understand what my problem is and why it randomly stopped working after I updated.

I know what's going on. It's a problem with conflicts caused by the b44 driver (an ethernet driver) and the ssb module, which is a dependency of b43. ssb won't unload if b44 is active, even if ssb is on the blacklist.

The solution is to rmmod b44 before unloading ssb. If you type these commands, does your wireless work:

If you get any error messages besides "warning: module XXX does not exist in /proc/modules" (this error can be ignored), please post them here. Otherwise, the steps above should allow ndiswrapper to claim your card.

Note that removing b44 will kill your wired connection, if you have one, until the next reboot.

look at the output of lshw -C Network. You want it to say that, according to lshw, ndiswrapper is claiming the wireless card (there will be a line in the output text that says something like "driver=ndiswrapper+[some windows driver]". You do not want to see any mention of "b43" or "ssb" anywhere.

If lshw looks alright, then run dmesg | grep -e ndis -e wlan and look at the output. Do you see any errors mentioned?

There's no mention of a wireless network or the ndiswrapper anywhere.
I've typed that in before and there was always a third catagory for the wireless network after the ethernet one. I do not know what happened.

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

There's no mention of a wireless network or the ndiswrapper anywhere.
I've typed that in before and there was always a third catagory for the wireless network after the ethernet one. I do not know what happened.

And please post all of the output here. I was trying to avoid making you do that since I'm sure it's inconvenient, as you don't seem to have any Internet connection on Ubuntu right now, so I'm assuming that you have to copy and paste the text out to another computer in order to post it here. But please post all of that stuff so that we can figure out concretely what's going on. I'm sorry it's not working as well as it should, but thanks for staying positive.

Re: Comprehensive ndiswrapper troubleshooting guide

THANK YOU!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU!
It worked like a charm.
Thank you very much for going that extra bit to help me out with this. I sure the communuty would be very different if there weren't people willing to help.